This is the reprint of an article by sacred geometry expert Dr. Robert Gilbert, president of  Vesica Institute. Dr. Gilbert is the source of much excellent information on esoteric topics. You can get more information at Dr. Gilbert’s website, vesica.org

In recent weeks, I have noticed a major spiritual challenge has emerged, which is affecting many of us at a deep level.

Mental and emotional pressures have intensified, creating chaos in people’s lives. People are finding themselves easily triggered into strong emotional reactions, being hyper-sensitive, being prone to angry disputes with others which could be avoided but instead spiral destructively out of control.

I have heard from countless people recently with the same story, and have found the same thing within myself at times.  I too have made mistakes recently with people, usually out of reacting to a situation or statement with anger or stress.

There is definitely something metaphysical affecting many people right now, and mostly not in a beneficial way.  In Spiritual Science these forces are understood to be Astral (mental and emotional) impulses coming from multiple sources which can combine together powerfully, affecting us beneath the level of our conscious awareness.

Rather than go into the multiple energetic and spiritual sources of this Astral (mental and emotional) pressure which many of us have experienced recently — which would take some time to explain and break down into specifics — I would like to share with you instead some thoughts regarding the purpose, and the opportunity presented by this kind of spiritual challenge.

The most essential thing is that these spiritual challenges serve the core alchemical purpose of our Earthly life: to develop our higher forces / consciousness / skills through inner and outer events which propel our evolution forward, pushing us to consciously develop the counterforces to these challenges.

In most cases we only develop these powerful inner counterforces if something is pushing us from the other (undesirable) direction first, allowing us to become conscious in a particular area of life because of that opposition, and thereby igniting our determination to exert effort in the opposite direction through our own free will.

This is the spiritual development “weight lifting” which makes us strong inside and creates advances on our spiritual path; the same principle as progressive resistance weight lifting making the physical body stronger.

In Spiritual Science the current challenges — and those throughout our lives — are understood to be an Initiation in:

1. Compassion.  The other person is suffering, and acting out because of their pain and methods of coping with that pain.  It is not really about us. Our anger must be transmuted into recognition of, and compassion for, the other person’s suffering.

2. Fraternity.  The state of higher consciousness is always that we are not separate from other people; we all come from the same source, the ONE.  They are literally our brothers and sisters, even if they are the prodigal son or daughter at this moment of their life journey.  This awareness of our essential unity combines with compassion for the other person’s suffering, forming in our hearts the core of the Holy Grail Initiation: the inner experience of the Grail Question “Brother or Sister, What Ails Thee?”

3. Overcoming Division.  We catch ourselves when we see the other person as an “enemy.”   We don’t have any enemies.  We have friends — our brothers and sisters — who don’t know yet that we are friends and family.  When we recognize that, in the fullness of karma,  even our worst enemies become intimate companions later in our journey, we no longer see others as our enemies.  As Christ prayed for those who tortured him:  “God Forgive Them, They Know Not What They Do.”

4. Turning our Will toward our Higher Self, to participation with the greater purposes and needs of humanity.  No longer reacting to things in our lives from our low-consciousness petty personality, but instead “leaving our stuff at the door” when we work with others, coming in unencumbered by all our reactive states.  Consciously connecting to our higher self and the karmic missions which we incarnated to carry out on Earth; becoming a peacemaker, and a supporter of people to move in a higher direction.

Many of us have experienced working with a group of other people for spiritual or practical goals, which ended in chaos due to persons in the group NOT ‘leaving their stuff at the door’ and instead bringing all of their reactivity and agendas into the group work.

Any group or organization is easily destroyed by playing on the personality conflicts and egotism of the group members.  It is rare — but vital — that we grow to the point that we can work cleanly and non-reactively with other people to achieve higher goals for the world.  Which leads us to…

5. Observing and Recognizing the Quality of our own Inner States; our own thoughts, feelings, and actions.  In the early stages of spiritual initiation, we learn to recognize that these inner states create “Thoughtforms” which affect us and other people around us.  At higher stages of initiation we learn that in reality these aspects of our inner life create a kind of living spiritual being, which the initiated in the Western Tradition call “Elementals” (these are human-generated elementals, not the more commonly understood ‘nature elementals.’)

The Tibetans call our self-generated thoughtforms/elementals by the name ‘Tulpas.’ The Greek Cypriot Hermetic master Stylianos Atteshlis noted that there were three key inner states (in reality, elementals we ourselves create on a constant basis) which destroy people and relationships, which we must stop creating:

1)  Feeling Insulted

2)  Feeling Wounded

3)  Feeling Guilty

How many of us can claim to not fall into those three traps on a regular basis? What has it cost you thus far in your life, as a result of creating these three inner states– feeling insulted by others, feeling wounded by others, and feeling guilty? Have you lost friends, lovers, family, opportunities, as a result of creating these inner states and acting out destructively because of them? And what would it mean for our lives if we did truly stop creating all three of these thoughtforms?

Awareness of these three poisonous thoughtforms — and ceasing to create and nurture  them internally — is a first step, followed by greater self-observation and the conscious creation of beneficial inner states / thoughtforms / elementals in their place.

Personally, with my own challenges as a teacher and striving to help and work with lots of people who bring many different needs and personal issues, I freely confess that I fail in the above 5 spiritual practices on a daily basis.

However it is essential to know that it is more important to honestly recognize our true current state of development and our challenges, than to pretend to a perfected and enlightened state when we present ourselves to the world.

One of the most common mistakes in modern spiritual teachers is thinking they have to pretend in public to be more developed and perfected than they really are.  In reality this pretense is a road leading to black magic and manipulation of others, although this realization may not present itself clearly until much later in one’s life.

Anyone who has spent time privately with many “spiritual teachers” knows just how far they may still be from perfection in their personal lives, when away from the public spotlight.

A final important principle is the following:  what is vital is not that we fail to think and act from our higher selves on a daily basis, it is that we continually pick ourselves right back up when we make a mistake and return to the practice of higher awareness and resonance.   That attitude —  of picking ourselves right back up and returning straight back to the practice of higher awareness (overcoming our powerful inner desire to wallow in feeling offended, feeling hurt, and/or feeling guilty) — is a vital key to initiation, to attaining our true spiritual potential.

The inner and outer challenges many of us have experienced recently, and which we will all experience in our journey on Earth, present us with a divine opportunity to rise to a higher state of consciousness and being.

This is what I have been thinking about during these challenging times, thank you for allowing me to share it with you.